


Who Wanted a Happily Ever After, Anyways?

by KingOfFanfiction



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band), One Direction (Band)
Genre: ??? - Freeform, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Cliche, Depression, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, How Do I Tag, M/M, mute!niall, v old work of mine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:01:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4269459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingOfFanfiction/pseuds/KingOfFanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is one of those stories where Niall is an ironically mute musician who has too much affection and, too many secrets; Ashton is a numb alcoholic who feels too little, who's trying to figure things out. Unlikely together, they're a mess.</p><p>Who wanted a happily ever after, anyways?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Wanted a Happily Ever After, Anyways?

**Author's Note:**

> i honestly don't know if this will trigger anyone, but, just to play it safe, there is mentions of attempted suicide and heavy alcoholism.
> 
> IF ANYTHING ELSE TRIGGERS YOU, PLEASE TELL ME!

Ashton didn't know when it happened. He didn't know when his fingers stopped searching for textures of happiness, or when his vocal cords stopped rumbling in laughter, or when his eyes stopped their warm swirls of optimism. He didn't know.

Nothing was the same.

His heart had stopped beating with neon colours, and his nose stopped twitching with anticipation. It was almost like he had forgotten what  _beautiful_  even meant.  _Beautiful_  used to be simple lines in wood or old pictures with worn edges of the past or the hazy smell of a burnt out wick.  _Beautiful_  used to be little gifts of affection and careless mistakes. But now,  _beautiful_  was nothing. Beauty was replaced by stark nights and empty heads. Everyone seemed to grow distant from him, their echoes of laughter and love fading into an uncomfortable ringing in his ears. Their once lovely voices becoming refrigerated and cold. Propagated ideas of squinting eyes and warm butterflies dispersed into piles of ash that sat in his stomach. Beautiful was nothing.

What was once great in abundance, his inspiration had long since run dry and his heart stopped emotionally beating. He was empty, empty and numb. Even the bitter taste of alcohol didn't satisfy anymore. It stopped leaving his tongue covered in tingles and excitement, now it left behind a sour taste of brokenness, but he still kept the aluminum bottles in his fridge, afraid of losing it all without them.

He was dependent on lifeless bottles that gave him nothing except hazy memories and bitter emotions. Depression inhaled him and spat him out like he spat up last night's cold dinner into the porcelain bowl, almost like he was spitting his thoughts and nonexistent emotions into the bowl.

His head was heavy and empty as it clunked against the toilet of an unknown club. The heavy colours peeking from under the bathroom door did nothing to excite him. They inked across the tile floor and up his pants leg. The music was nothing but heavy vibrations, it had given up on him, like everything and everyone else. They all pulled away and threw him into a rubbish bin, but it didn't anger him, it didn't sadden him. He felt no emotion towards it. Like usual.

Ashton didn't know how long he had been on the toilet when the sound of stilettos clacking against the floor eased into his ears. He had gone into the birds' room.

Ashton's legs didn't give out on him as he stumbled to unlock the door and head to the sink. The woman didn't even scream or try to claw his recently tanned skin, she just stared at him with sympathy in her brown eyes. She tried to offer him money as he stalked out of the bathroom.

He didn't need sympathy.

He didn't need anything.

__ _

Ashton tried to remember the last time he wanted something. He tried to breach past the walls that had long since caved in on each other and remember when his eyes last shown with grace and joy. He couldn't remember.

He couldn't remember the last time he smiled or the last time he actually laughed. The fragments of memories had drifted away from him like a boat sailing off course and down a waterfall. The colours he desperately tried to feel and see again, that never came to him, were forgotten and discarded somewhere. Somewhere deep and locked away, and he had lost the key to it. He tried to remember anything and everything that he once yearned for and felt for.

Like how the colours weren't always just a pigment, they were a bold statement or a small smile. They were an untold secret, a flamboyant story. Colours were a boisterous laugh or a glistening tear or a loud shout of anger. Colours were emotions, they were him. But now, all his colours were grey tinted and sat neatly behind his eyelids instead of explosions. The colours were drained away and spat out.

His soul left with the colours.

But sometimes Ashton thought he'd feel the emotion recovering and slowly retracing back into his veins. Sometimes he thought his lips would twitch into a smile, or that he'd feel his chest tighten like it had been holding in a laugh for years.

When he'd see someone that reminded him of his childhood, he thought he felt something, but he didn't. He never did.

His chest was empty, heart never beating, eyes never crinkling. Happiness was foreign to him, once a known land, but then taken over by a numbing depression, a war he easily lost. He was vulnerable when he smiled too much or he felt too much. He wasn't the same now.

He was strong and numb, emotion no longer there. Everything seemed easier now, but it wasn't. It was hard with the constant search for the colour to return to his vision, the constant drag in his step when he heard laughter. When he saw someone painting or twirling drumsticks between their fingers his heart would silently ache. When he felt all this he'd blame every human. He'd blame them for being as mindless as him, and lost like him. Their smiles fleeting away from him, their tainted eyes that varied in expressions, their ability to  _feel_  made him feel small and deserted in nothing. Like every human left him behind in the race of life, like they spun him off his designated path and tumbled him into an abyss of nothing. Like they put him in nothing like they put him in a place where he could see everything he was. A place where reality sat on a high throne, strong hand ordering everyone to doom. A place where Ashton could see what exactly he was, and he didn't like it.

__ _

A part of him cried out from all the vacant thoughts and stuporous ways. That part wanted the iridescence of life to return to his pupils and regenerate his body. That part wanted his body to raise goosebumps like it used to when he heard his neighbor singing or when he touched a specific texture. That part of him was puerile and wanted to go back to his hempy ways, but he loved it so. The other part of him was acrimonious and unbelievably frigid in structure. This part of him wanted nothing more than to die and spit hateful words to others. This part wanted to tear him apart and stitch him back together in random places. This part was venom infused and held an eerie look in its eyes, but this part made him who he was. The two fought together for control for days, months, years, of his life until he had enough.

Ashton had forced himself to go numb.

__ _

The first time Ashton saw his face was four years and three-quarters after he, Ashton, went numb, and he, his neighbor, stopped singing. It was the equivalent of seeing the first drop of rain after an intense drought, or eliciting that certain scent that decieves your brain into thinking of home. It was something new to Ashton.

The way the dyed-blond hair stuck out in the crowd of brown mops of hair in the flats' lobby. His eyes sparkled with happiness and feelings that Ashton had long since forgotten. His milky skin reminded Ashton of innocence and free spirits, yet Ashton felt nothing, but the urge to get closer to the boy. It was like the boy had a strong gravitational pull to him. Everyone's eyes were dull and sunken in, like his own, except that boy's. His eyes were animated and full of life, something everyone was missing. His eyes were circulating with anticipation and unbelievable gleams of sparkles. He seemed to be happy about the mere fact that Ashton was out of his flat, walking and attentive.

The boy carried himself over to Ashton, he was shorter than him by plenty of inches, and before Ashton knew it, they were in his flat.

Niall was his name, and all Ashton knew was that he was kissing him, no reason to, but just for the pure purpose that this boy made him feel something. Rough lips against smooth, tan against ivory, death against life.

Ashton was rushing things a bit, but Niall didn't seem to care as he let out soundless moans that looked pleasant to Ashton, but it fueled nothing for Ashton. It was more like a social experiment to Ashton than an act of sultry needs. He wanted to see what it was like to feel, what it was like to actually care. Ashton didn't want, need, this, he just wanted the small peeks of what he lost. What he had shoved away into nothing.

Yet Ashton still felt nothing. He felt nothing when his hands roughly covered the space of Niall's hips, or when Niall silently pleaded. He felt nothing, and it was a disappointment. Maybe Ashton was too blunt for his own good, but when Niall had lied down next to him afterwards, he felt cheated. Like he was expecting Niall to fill a job that he assigned for him unknowingly to fulfill. He felt deceived and lied to.

He felt disgusting towards the mute boy next to him because of what he could do:  _feel._ But that didn't halt Ashton in his task of figuring the older boy out, instead it pulled something out of him that he threw away: curiosity.

He had learned a lot about Niall in the next months that had briskly passed. He learned that Niall was a musician who also had a book published about a cheap story of unrequited love. He learned that Niall felt too easily and that he was fragile from something, something unknown. He learned that for the first time since he had fell into the pit of numbness, that he actually had to care.

__ _

The first time the pads of his fingers ran over the smooth periwinkle book cover, Ashton knew this was going to be an untrodden experience for him. The words thread together in heavy-ink cursive letters to spell  _Again?_  before detaching into a small salmon heart at the end of the _?_  . Ashton felt a short spike of sadness as he read the inked words that were beautifully written. Each word was spelt with passion and spoke a secret language he once understood. It was something more than he expected from the mute boy. The book forcefully slammed a totally different reality into his face. It was like he completely stopped breathing, like time slowed itself just for him to comprehend that maybe he wasn't okay with the way he was. A part of him wanted to jump out his fourteen-story window and land on the cold cement and chase after the clear cobalt blue skies and happy-faced people he once knew that the book described. The same time he put the book down because of the overwhelming senses of being baffled for the first time, the small print infested in the back of his mind. He couldn't find a place for the jumbled words to fit in the discarded hopes and run-on thoughts. He couldn't comprehend the fact that someone actually intruded through his stiff barriers and grasped his heart in their warm palm, and sincerely made the emotionally paralyzed organ beat with golden sparks.

When Ashton went to bed that night, conjoined door to Niall and his flat open incase he needed his loneliness satisfied, he heard the silent tuning of Niall's guitar. While the words swarmed unevenly in his thoughts, he was hit with something once more. Niall sent him further into thought. Almost like Ashton was falling out of a tree, hitting every splintered branch on the way down, hitting every limb of hazy reality and imagination. The words eluded Ashton in a sense of euphoria as he listened quietly to the retelling of chapter five in his head. The way the cheap plot was renovated into something much more than a couple who hoarded scented candles and opened a military letter, it was moved to a bold mixture of unclear emotions that made Ashton's head spin with drops of joy. Ashton soon realized something that was missed from his relationship with Niall:  _love_.

Ashton realized that of his whole time spent with the older boy, he hadn't shown love. Niall fell in love with him ever since the first night, but Ashton never had. He tricked the boy into thinking that Ashton cared when really Ashton was using this- this relationship as a pity for himself. For the first time in years, Ashton realized that he was neglecting the small things that he thought he had discovered. As Ashton sat himself up in bed, he could hear the silent tears rolling off Niall's cheeks, the heaving of his chest, and the sound of a guitar string splitting.

__ _

Ashton was greedily draining Niall of his happiness for his own use.

__ _

Niall was on the periphery of an unfamed altitudinous cable-bridge, hands curled over the third frost-bitten rail. The piceous waters swirled as the snow remained blanketing in the starless sky. It was a spectral kind of peace, quiet, but uncomfortably so. He let out small puffs of mist as he perilously climbed higher up the rusted stacked rails, the height he was gaining enhancing the thrill. Niall had been caught on the intellection of the impact of death and heightened bridges or balconies, and this bridge was veiled in broken dreams, perniciousness, and desperation.

Fragments of rust pulled off into his pink-tipped fingers as he pulled himself up the last rail. The wind purled at his frigid hair, pulling thick clumps of snow into the locks. He felt weightless, and that was his favorite feeling. He felt as if he could fly among the other worthless people who needed this just as much as he did. Where he could shed the crusted blood and skin sheathed in regret and disgust. He felt light and airy, a crooked smile on his face as his lead covered fingers rubbed into the rust. Another dream to be shredded, another smile to be missed in the crowd of other's in the inky sea, another body to drift alone, another life to be taken. Niall felt the hands twirl his hair and lean him in towards the frigid cold waters below. The wind pushed back at him, almost telling him to leave as the sharp air cut into his throat and numbed lips. His eyes crinkled and his lips upturned as his foot shook from the cold weather,  _weightless_. Niall dug further into the rails as he sat himself on the top rail, small body impetuously shook from happiness or the weather, he didn't know. Niall's eyes closed momentarily before sealing completely shut,  _Am I alive or just breathing?_ Niall relaxed his shoulders as he listened to the remnants of silent echoes that portrayed misconceptions and lost hope. He felt as if he breathed for this, this single moment in time where the world stopped rotating and the moon stopped raising itself high in the air, and the blended truth became clear in the heavy clouds of snow that attatched to his clothes and limbs. The truth he needed so desperately sat there, but he couldn't shout for it or scream out in pure ferocity, no. He was mute, and nothing could change that, all but the simple turning back of time, back to when he first saw Ashton bring in the three casements of alcohol, and back to the time before he stumbled into the occupied alley. Back to the time when he sang freely and he still had the simple moments of the feeling of being sheltered and maintained by joy. Back to the time when he didn't cry himelf to sleep, and he didn't forcefully snap his guitar strings or singe the papers of his book. Back to the time when he didn't want  _this_. He wanted to go back when he still felt something warming his heart when he saw Ashton instead of raw fury deep in his veins and circulating in his blood. Niall wanted to go back when he didn't play the happy one, and he wanted to go back to the time when he could freely hate someone instead of attempting to shelter everyone from what he had to go through.

Niall's teeth grit together as he tried to cry out for the time to break and bring him back to what he wanted. He clawed at his pale skin, raw rivers of red scratches flowing down the inside of his arms. His feet jostled to make himself comfortable as he continued to claw at his skin relentlessly. As he dipped downward, he felt the mood change. Ashton came thudding down the platform of the bridge, angry remarks about how selfish he was, and that he couldn't do that to Ashton. Ashton was on him in mere seconds strong hands wrapping around his ankles and dragging him down. Niall let out muted shouts of  _please, please, I need this, no. I can't hurt you, no. NoNoNoNo._ Ashton held him firmly as he thrashed around and tried to jerk from his grasp. Niall felt the love clinging to his hate -- hope clinging onto his hopelessness -- and it disturbed him how something so beautiful turned sour and bitter in the back of his mouth. Ashton hushed the silent sorry's Niall mouthed into his shoulder, trying to conceive the idea of all the pain Niall felt compared to his numbness. Niall cried, tried to scream, he tried to do something he  _knew_  hecouldn't do.

Ashton felt himself foolishly falling for the older boy, but he could feel the asperity slowly setting deep into Niall's skin.

__ _

Niall felt as though he'd go mad -  _mad_   _-_ the longer he sat in the unbearable silence. It took all his willpower to not pull into himself and empty all his pent up emotions. Ashton saw, he saw the way Niall's fingers twitched around the cuppa, the way Niall kept rolling the jumper over his hands in an attempt to hide something, but he felt him breaking slowly. Niall listened to the ticking of the analogue clock behind him, that was dangerously, irritatingly close to his ear, and waited patiently for the fire to combust inside him. He waited until he felt Ashton's bipolar eyes fixate on him, a hole burning callously into his forehead. Niall stood, legs quivering with anger as he raised his eyes to meet Ashton's hard, emotionless, yet fully emotional, eyes.

Niall opened his mouth, moving his hands in foreign sign language. His tongue rolled over his teeth as he silently sapt out the words:  _I hate you._ Ashton read his lips, perfectly understanding of how much pent up hatred Niall felt towards him, but he knew something was there. He knew that he painfully forced Niall to splinter under his authority, he knew how many times he split the boy in-half, and how many times he slammed the door in his face; however, he felt the quickly-turning-cold heart beat with small bursts of glow. He felt the life of something growing from the desolation of neglect and abuse. Before Ashton could ponder further more, Niall was gone.

He left, head turned away and teary eyes dispersed into nothing, muted anger illuminating around him. He left so Ashton couldn't see through him anymore.

He left so Ashton couldn't read his darkest secrets.

__ _

Life was a game and the couple was losing.

__ _

Ashton wanted to see Niall's eyes lighten once again, he wanted to break past the darkened barrier that had been built as a defense against Ashton. Niall had built reinforcements to keep prying eyes like his out. Niall was trying to hide something. They were sat at the damned dining room table again, Ashton with a glass of milk in hand, Niall nothing. Ashton eyed Niall, alertness wary as Niall twitched slightly. He saw Niall sinking into the darkness he had been in, but he was convinced that Niall changed him. Ashton hadn't realized he was broke until he saw Niall's face, and Niall hadn't realized he was vulnerable until he saw Ashton. They both broke and fixed each other. Ashton's eyes boar into the sunken Niall, his eyes raking his body for some explanation of why part of him hated Ashton for stopping him from jumping, and why part of him thanked Ashton. Ashton wasn't patient, no. He was assertive and blunt, and he wanted,  _needed_ , to know. Ashton knocked his glass off the table, the glass pulverizing into sprinkles of glistening shards; Ashton raised his voice, ignoring the milk soaking into his shorts, "Why are you so indignant towards me?" Niall didn't answer his dull hair flopped over his sickly-pale skin, not even flinching.

"Tell me!"

Niall didn't budge, his lips didn't part to mouth the answer to him, his hands didn't move blisteringly fast to sign something, he did nothing. Ashton stood, words spewing out of his mouth as Niall weakly stood with him. Ashton loomed over Niall, his arms pulling his frail body in, hands pulling the fringe that was bold against his ivory skin, " _Please_. Please tell me." Liquid dysphoria rolled down the adolescence cheeks, a rosy blush spread against his skin as he looked up to Ashton his hands moving slowly and steadily.

_Me._

Niall's eyes were lifeless, no sympathy or emotion hanging in the irirs'.

Ashton cringed in a bitter astonishment, "You?" Niall shrugged his limp shoulders, the words ' _I hate you_ ' repeating in his empty skull. Ashton gently lifted his chin, eyes glancing between his lips and eyes, "You- you'd never be the problem." Ashton connected their lips. It was a sappy kiss that connected their lips like two perfectly compatible puzzle pieces, allowing the intense sparks to travel from their lips to their toes.

Maybe, Niall wasn't the problem.

Maybe, Ashton wasn't the problem.

Maybe, their broken pasts, high defensive walls, and ignorant ways were the problem.

_Maybe._

__ _

Niall wanted something he knew was unfathomable to accomplish. Niall wanted one of the cheap, cheesy, forever-and-always, never-a-secret-left-untold kind of relationship, but when he realized he couldn't achieve this if he wasn't going to give what he asked, he met the harsh reality. Ashton knew Niall was still hiding something, even after he broke past the first layer of walls, he knew there was a much larger one awaiting.

When Niall finally broke, tears and running nose and all, Ashton knew this would work. Niall tried to explain why he was the way he was, but his lips were moving too fast for Ashton to read, he had to wait for the sobbing left-handed boy to write the paragraph of his past, but then he read the cursive-print handwriting, he hadn't prepared himself for it. He himself became a blubbering mess as he read Niall's past in the short paragraph. He wasn't expecting for something like this to happen, he wasn't expecting something so sinister and cruel to have happened to the older boy who always smiled and giggled, who was always so fucking happy. Ashton hadn't expected that Niall would've apologized for it because it wasn't his fault.

Ashton hadn't expected for himself to actually want to kill someone over a paragraph.

__ _

When Ashton had his first taste of alcohol after he sold his time to Niall, he felt no change. Ashton realized that the bottle of alcohol didn't excite him as much as Niall did.

Ashton finally found someone to love more than his aluminum cans.

__ _

Niall's words and sentences began flowing more frequently and more heart-felt than they used to be. His fingers found something blithe in the notes of his guitar or the typed print in his drafts. Niall found more enjoyment in smiling at strangers and helping the needy, but he wasn't as satisfied as he was when he was with Ashton.

Niall found someone to love more than being mirthful.

__ _

It was like they were falling into infinity, nothing was there to stop them until they hit the bottom of the sky-mirroring water. It was early sunrise, and the two had nothing but the pure pleasure of each other's company. Their limbs tangled, smiles stretching their limits, everything exploding into infinity. Infinity was what they wanted, but Ashton didn't want to live long enough to see the brightness leave his  _beautiful_ , awe-gasping, beryl blue eyes that were specked with streaks of golden sunshine, and coiled with silver linings, like the lining of clouds. His eyes were the little things that made everything big. As they intertwined their limbs, Ashton was elated. He knew what happiness was.

Niall made him feel again. He made him feel the newly vacuumed carpet under his toes, the recently removed clothing from the dryer, the rain on his prickled skin, the laughter finally tickling his vocal cords, he made him  _feel_ again.

Niall watched as Ashton smiled, his eyes crinkled, cherry lips reaching to infinity, white teeth reflecting the sun, he watched Ashton experience happiness.

Ashton made Niall understand that persistence is okay, and that everyone is broken. Ashton made Niall experience what actual happiness was, what it felt like to feel free, what it felt like to feel confident in his past.

__ _

They made it together, complete opposites, secretly pessimistic and secretly optimistic, too much affection and too little, no understanding in what they were.

Together they were a bitter-sweet candy, a loud thud on soft carpet, a lightning storm on a cloudless day, a not so happily ever after.

__ _

The emotionless optimistic felt again, and the affectionate pessimistic saw what reality was.

__ _

Niall felt weightless, and Ashton finally saw the colours return in his own eyes.

__ _


End file.
